If a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety like light and cloud-shadows
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand
and will not let you fall.

It’s a very famous quote that I’ve heard many, many times but only recently began to get a sense of what I think it really means. Life happens, stuff happens — this is inevitable and responding with pure, genuine, heart felt pain is what is natural. Or said another way, it is letting your heart break open with love.

But what is suffering? I think suffering is letting your heart close down in judgement — judgement either of one’s self, another or a situation, whatever that may be. Suffering includes regrets, all forms of “if only’s” and “I should have’s”. It also includes believing that there is something wrong that you have done or something intrinsically wrong with you or another. Blame of anything or anyone leads to suffering. Negative out-picturing of events, past, present and future also cause suffering. An idea that says life can never be the same without a person, a situation, or a condition being met, will certainly lead you on a path to suffering. If we do the simple math, it often looks like: this happened + I judge it to mean this painful thing = I now suffer.

Any time you are in pain that has led to suffering you can be certain it includes some type of discrimination. I call it discrimination because it selectively screens out what is truth in favor of a perception that separates you from believing in yourself or others and ultimately from believing in Life’s tendency to flow towards well being, balance, order, benevolence and grace. As long as we are willing to settle for conclusions and judgements that separate us from all that Life willingly and daily offers up to us, we will suffer.

Where’s the way out? When suffering, ask yourself what are you believing about yourself, another or the situation right now. Now ask yourself if you unequivocally know that whatever it is you are believing, is absolutely true. There is very little, if anything, to which you can honestly respond with a yes. Now, are you willing to suspend what you’ve been believing? You see, wanting to be on the other side of suffering is a beginning and wanting to be in self friendly relationship with yourself is a must. Yet wanting won’t be enough, it requires your willingness to live in harmony with yourself. And sometimes that willingness comes a bit at a time but come it will for one who is ready to walk in harmony with his or herself.

Want the world to be a peaceful, harmonious place, a world filled with love and loving people, want it to be a world without discrimination? It all starts at home with a willingness to walk the inner walk of living in friendship with ourselves one step, one day at a time.

~Chief Dan George~
Opening Ceremonies Vancouver Olympics 2010

Here is another “found” poem I have created. This time I’ve brought Rumi and Rilke together. No small task! Great poets they were but not contemporaries as are Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry in my previous found poem. This particular found poem starts with two lines from a Rumi poem and then alternates with Rilke’s words on the next two lines. This pattern is repeated with Rumi’s words then Rilke’s. No more than 1-3 lines from any one poem is used. There are many ways to create a found poem – this is one way. Below I list the eight poems that were used to accomplish this.

At first I thought: I really can’t do this. This could be tantamount to blasphemy on some level. However I’ve recently discovered that God is a cat lover. When I get to the pearly gates, I’ve got extra credit as well as he’s grading on a curve, so blasphemy I can do a little and still not risk the fantasy suite and hot tub that awaits me. :)

And now without further adieu, I bring you Rumi and Rilke, together at last.

There’s a surge up from the surface
into what is beyond dying

Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours floats into the air

It is sunlight slicing the dark
The way the night knows itself with the moon.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another’s life that’s wide and timeless

If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.

Inside this new love, die
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.

The Vigil – Rumi
The Second Elegy – Rilke
All Rivers at Once – Rumi (note: “I am” replaced with “It is”)
In the Arc of Your Mallet – Rumi (note: it is sunlight… and the way the night…, two separate Rumi poems put together in this one verse)
The Book of Monastic Life I,5 – Rilke
Elephant in the Dark – Rumi
The Book of Pilgrimage, II,1 – Rilke
Quietness – Rumi